Thursday, July 28, 2016

This blog focuses on the Soviet experience with revolution,
but the Russian Revolution should frequently be put into historical context by
comparing it with other revolutions, both European and non-European. With little background in Iranian history,
I’ve seldom ventured to make any comparisons between 1917 and 1979. However, this summer I participated in the
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s Global Studies Research Lab. The lab included access to the university’s
wonderful library collections, as well as access to some of the country’s
foremost experts in globalization, including Dr. Antoinette Burton, co-author
of Empires
and the Reach of the Global, 1870-1945 and dozens of other highly
influential books and articles about empire, globalization, and related topics. In my meeting with Burton, she recommended one of
her colleague’s books, Remembering Akbar: Inside the Iranian Revolution. The book, published under the pen name
Behrooz Ghamari, offers a strikingly intimate portrait of life before, during,
and after one of the twentieth century’s most important revolutions.

Ghamari’s account of revolution suggests that revolutions
should perhaps rarely be described as anything other than plural
phenomena.In other words, it’s clear
from Ghamari’s account that the Iranian Revolution, like the Russian
Revolution, happened in stages.Unrest
in the country built up gradually, and unpredictably, and its success in
overthrowing the Shah happened unexpectedly.Ghamari also makes it clear that
the Iranian Revolution, like the Russian Revolution, was all about
discourse.The Revolution was an
explosion of speech acts taking place in dozens or perhaps hundreds of
different settings or contexts.The
Revolution was performed.It was communicated.It took place whenever the disgruntled formed
discussion groups, passed along revolutionary books, put on radical plays,
printed critical pamphlets, marched, sang, or joined a crowd.

Remembering Akbar also helps us to see that the Russian
Revolution had an enormous direct influence on the course of events in Iran in
1979.Although Islamic revolutionaries
ultimately prevailed over their communist counterparts in the struggle against
tyranny, Iranian students were inspired by example of the Russian
Revolution.As late as 1979, and even
afterward, many of the Shah’s diverse opponents felts that Lenin and Marx
offered one of the clearest alternatives to oppression.Akbar,
the author’s revolutionary pseudonym, treated Lenin’s works, especially What is to be Done?, as if they contained the
same magical formula for liberation that the Bolsheviks already claimed they
did.Akbar also read the Russian authors
Shokolov and Gorky for inspiration, but also made room for Mao and various
other Yugoslavian and Italian communist critics of the Russian communist canon.

Ghamari’s account of revolution is a tragic one, revolving
as it does on the fact that the Iran’s new governing class, the Islamic theocrats,
imprisoned and executed thousands, targeting leftists, religious minorities,
and many other vulnerable groups.In
fact, Ghamari’s time in one of Iran’s most terrifying prisons inevitably conjures
up comparisons with Koestler’s Darkness
at Noon, and Bukharin’s own novel, written as he awaited execution at the
hands of Stalin.In each case, the Revolution is betrayed, and
the lack of democracy in the movement leads to unimaginable repression.

Incredibly, Akbar and other bourgeois intellectual students took to the streets because they felt
that they would be able to enter factories and lead a revolutionary proletariat
on the victory against a murderous king.In some ways, the book seems anachronistic.Could 1917 really be repeated in 1979, the
age of Jimmy Carter and Brezhnev? But it’s hard to say what’s more
anachronistic, the idea of a revolutionary proletariat, or the idea of an
absolute monarch.Of course, the Islamic
dimension of the Iranian Revolution somehow managed to make both proletariat and
monarch obsolete.Although reviving
certain ancient symbolism, the Islamic State was somehow distinctly
modern.

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The author studied European history and literature (but alas not the Russian language) at Georgetown University, McGill University, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is currently dean of arts and sciences at a community college in Illinois. Views expressed on the blog are his own. The author welcomes ideas for academic or creative collaboration.